'Weather Center Live's' Alex Wilson: 'Sometimes, weather is the most important story'

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After working every shift imaginable since arriving at The Weather Channel last year, Alex Wilson is glad to have one to call home now.

The former weekend meteorologist recently began co-anchoring weekday afternoon editions of “Weather Center Live” with recent channel returnee Dave Schwartz. Their three-hour program increases live coverage, a big component of the arrangement made with DirecTV to restore the channel to that carrier’s lineup.

“Remembering where I was from a viewer’s standpoint, when I got home and would turn on the TV, I wanted to see live weather,” Wilson tells Zap2it. “I think it’s exciting that we are offering that to people, because in a lot of cases, weather is the most important story.

“As a teenager,” recalls Wilson, “I used to watch a local sports channel with a morning show similar to ‘SportsCenter’ on ESPN, but the one thing I hated was that there was never any weather, so I’d always have to switch over to the local ABC affiliate for it. I don’t really think there’s anybody who says, ‘I don’t care about the weather.’ “

Previously employed at stations in the Carolinas and West Virginia, Wilson took a dual major in broadcast journalism and marketing at Syracuse University. “The journalism world can be fickle,” she reasons, “so I had a backup. That’s something else the Newhouse School (at SU) teaches you, that the TV world is ever-changing. A lot of people I went to school with have since left for more typical 9-to-5 jobs, with holidays off.”

Wilson went on to earn her meteorology degree at Penn State, where she won a scholarship sponsored by The Weather Channel. “To look back on that is so cool,” she notes, “to now be working there a few years later.”

A more structured weekday schedule has meant a lifestyle readjustment for Wilson lately, but a welcome one: “Especially with all the things that go on in Atlanta (The Weather Channel’s base), I’m super-thankful, but I also feel a little bad because I know there are people who are working the weekends. I just feel very lucky.”